


Happy Accident

by Duck_Life



Category: Boy Meets World, Girl Meets World
Genre: College, Fluff, Gen, Graduation, Missing Scene, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 05:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14709974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Topanga's been so stressed out with law school applications, studying for the LSAT and trying to catch the train back to Philadelphia on weekends to visit Cory at Pennbrook, she figures it's not that big a deal when she forgets to take her birth control a night or two. And then suddenly it's a very big deal.





	Happy Accident

That first summer in New York is fantastic, the four of them crammed into that hole-in-the-wall apartment, Cory and Topanga in one bedroom and Shawn in the other, with Eric sleeping on the couch. (That is, until he gets a promotion at the TV station and decides he can pay his own rent.) That summer is fantastic, but summers always end. And Cory still needs to graduate.

He’s managed to line up his credits so he can graduate early, at the end of his junior year, but that’s still almost ten months away. Almost ten months of having to take an hour-and-a-half train to see his wife. Almost ten months of living in a dorm without her. Almost ten months of him stuck at Pennbrook and her stuck at NYU.

Shawn, of course, goes with him. 

“Man, it’ll be just like freshman year, huh?” he babbles on the train, trying to get Cory’s mind off moping over Topanga. “Hey, c’mon, look on the bright side. It’s gonna be nice to take a shower without all that long hair clogging up the drain, right?”

Cory shoots him a look. “I’m still living with  _ you _ .” Over the summer, Shawn’s let his hair grow shaggy again. 

He flips it out of his eyes. “We’ll be graduated before you know it,” he promises. He also, miraculously, got his shit together enough to graduate early with Cory. “And then I can start freelancing in the city and you can start your life as a dutiful trophy husband.”

He means it as a jibe, but he doesn’t miss the way Cory lights up at the comment. “I’m going to buy so many bowties.” 

“You’re ninety.”

* * *

 

Topanga’s junior year of college turns out to be the hardest. It is, after all, her first real year at a much more difficult college, in a much more rigorous subject. And even though she throws herself at pre-law with as much vigor as she does anything else, it doesn’t come easy. It never gets easy.

Nearly every day in October, she calls Cory and tells him she’s quitting, she’s giving up and coming home to Philadelphia. And every time, Cory says calmly, “No you’re not.”

One night he actually pisses her off. “Why not?” she demands, stomping around her NYU dorm room, having left the hole-in-the-wall behind when summer ended. “Why can’t I quit? You said! You said if I failed you’d still be proud of me.”

“I know,” he says. She can picture him leaning back at the desk in his dorm room, nodding thoughtfully, and she feels a pang in her heart. “And I will be. But you haven’t failed. Not yet anyway.” 

Topanga scowls, throwing a balled up pair of socks across her room in annoyance. “You sound like your neighbor,” she scoffs, meaning it as an insult.

She knows he doesn’t take it that way.

* * *

 

They start out trying to visit each other every weekend, but that doesn’t hold up long. She has seminars and study sessions and interviews and he has… well, not much, but train fare isn’t cheap. 

They do call each other, though, every night, with Shawn occasionally swiping the phone from Cory and telling Topanga how much her husband is driving him nuts with his old man music and his newly developed knuckle-cracking habit. 

Christmas is good.  _ Normal _ . Cory misses normal. He curls up with Topanga on his parents’ couch while Feeny reads  _ A Christmas Carol _ . Beside Topanga, Josh falls asleep in Shawn’s lap, and Shawn’s not far behind. 

When Topanga shows up, dripping wet and shivering, in the dorm hallway some time late March, Cory’s forcibly pulled back to that night she came back from Pittsburgh when they were fifteen. He holds her just the same way now, arms circled around her with her head on his chest. 

“I thought you had exams,” Cory mumbles, his chin dipping down toward the top of her head. “I thought you had to study.” 

“What I had to do was see you,” she says, snuggling into him closer. “Besides, I studied on the train ride here and I’ll study on the way back. I’ve just… I’ve just been so stressed out with tests and applying to law school and… and all of it. I needed to be with you.” 

“Well… I’m glad,” Cory says lamely, nudging the door closed with his foot. Then he glances around the room, looking a little mischievous. “You know… Shawn’s studying right now.”

Topanga pulls back and frowns at him. “Are you seriously  _ scolding _ me for blowing off studying?”

“No, no,” Cory backtracks quickly. “Just… Shawn’s studying. He’s probably going to be studying for awhile. He probably won’t be back for hours.” 

“Oh,” Topanga says, grinning. She leans up to kiss him, long and slow. 

Cory grins back. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”

* * *

 

Topanga really has been stressed out lately. Being away from Cory is taking its toll on her, and so is NYU. Between preparing for the LSAT and keeping up with her regular coursework, she hardly remembers to eat sometimes. 

When her period is late, she barely notices. When it doesn’t come at all, she gets a little more antsy. But, really, she’s been so bad about remembering to take the pill with how hectic things are. She’s probably just messed up her cycle with her erratic birth control habits, and the stress definitely doesn’t help. 

Besides, she tells herself as she struggles to focus on the scantron in front of her and not on her missed period, they’re careful. They always use protection. (She knows, but doesn’t want to think about the fact that with Cory barely seeing her anymore he’s not exactly running to buy condoms every weekend. How long is the shelf life on those, she wonders, a couple years?) 

Topanga tries to just not think about it. If she doesn’t think about it, it will go away, right? That strategy lasts about a week and fizzles out when she’s out celebrating the end of exams with her pre-law friends and one of them hands her a flute of champagne. 

“Oh, I, um, I can’t,” Topanga says, pushing the glass back. 

Her friend frowns, tips her head to the side. “Why not? What, are you driving somewhere?” 

“No,” she says, head pounding. She can’t drink, of course, because she  _ might be _ ,  _ could be _ … she doesn’t even want to think it. Suddenly, celebrating the end of exams seems entirely unappealing. “I just remembered, I really need to run a few errands. I’ll see you later.” 

She doesn’t even give her friend time to respond before she bolts out the door. 

There’s a Walgreens between the bar and her dorm. She ducks in and flits between the aisles, feeling incredibly embarrassed for some reason. It’s not like she’s some kid, she reasons with herself, finally gathering up the courage to actually go down the feminine hygiene aisle. She’s a real adult, she’s  _ married _ . 

Even so, she grabs a “Congratulations, you’re expecting!” card and a gift bag to go with the pregnancy test, as well as a nice bottle of sparkling cider. When she slides this assortment across the cashier’s counter, she blurts out, “It’s a gag gift! For a baby shower!” 

The cashier doesn’t even seem to have heard her. He just scans it all in and accepts her credit card. 

Topanga rushes home, heart pounding as she practically sprints down the hall to her single-person dorm. She can’t avoid it any longer. It’s time. 

But then, of course, she can’t pee. She gulps down a bottle of juice from the mini-fridge and struts around her dorm, frustrated, until she actually needs to use the restroom. Having to discreetly take a pregnancy test in the hall-style dorm bathroom only further cements how not-ready she feels. 

She carries the pregnancy test back to her dorm room, holding it like it’s a bomb about to go off. And then she sets it on top of a paper towel on her desk, tucked behind her pencil sharpener so she won’t look at it before the required five minutes.

The waiting kills her, though, so she frantically pulls out her phone and calls Cory, just to hear his voice. 

She hears Shawn’s voice instead. “We’re sorry, the husband you have dialed is unavailable right now because he fell asleep watching  _ 60 Minutes _ because he’s ninety.” 

Topanga sighs. “Hi, Shawn.”

Somehow he picks up immediately how freaked out she is. “Whoa, what’s wrong?” 

She chews her bottom lip, not sure what to say. Screw it. “We might be pregnant.”

Shawn laughs, startled. “Topanga, we’ve never slept together.”

“Me and Cory, you dope,” she says, surprised at the bubble of laughter that rises up in her chest. It feels a lot better than the panic that’s been sitting there all week. “But I don’t know yet. I’m waiting for this pregnancy test to be ready and I’m supposed to wait five minutes and it’s only been one minute and I’m so goddamn scared.” 

“Alright, deep breath,” Shawn says, combing his hair out of his eyes. “It’s gonna be okay. You want me to wake up Cory?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Topanga frets. “No. Maybe there’s nothing to tell him. God, I hope there’s nothing to tell him.” She sighs, drumming her fingers on the desk. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t ever want to have a baby, you know? In a way, this would be good news. But not now! Not when I need to be focusing on law school and we don’t have enough money and—”

“Topanga, just, shh,” Shawn says, sounding exasperated but affectionate. “You gotta save all the worrying til after you know for sure, okay? No point in wasting all that worry energy now, before you even know.” He pauses. “Tell me about New York.”

“You’ve lived here.”

“Yeah, and I miss it,” Shawn says. “Are the bees out yet?”

She sucks in a deep breath and exhales, trying to let her shoulders relax. “Yes, God, they’re everywhere.”

“Good,” Shawn says, smiling. “I like those bees. Tried to take some photos of them once but I couldn’t get the focus right.” 

“Maybe this summer.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Shawn says, trying to picture it. Him and Cory back in New York, not sharing a dorm but crammed in another tiny apartment. Of course, if there’s a baby on the way, they probably don’t want him living with them anymore. It was kind of weird anyway, he thinks, a single guy living with his married friends. 

But then again, he’s seen  _ Full House _ . He gets that it takes a village— hell, he knows that firsthand. Growing up, his village was Chet and Virna and Turner and Feeny and the Matthewses. Maybe Cory and Topanga could use an uncle/godfather around, especially with Topanga still in school. 

“You know,” he says casually, “Shawn’s a good name. Unisex too. Shawn, Shawnie, Shawna. It’s good for a boy or a girl.” 

“Shut up,” she says with no real irritation behind it. “Okay. Okay. It’s time.” He waits and listens. He can hear a slight rustle— Topanga reaching for the pregnancy test. And then she starts whooping and hollering. “Oh thank God! Oh, oh my God, it’s negative. It’s negative, it’s negative.” She starts rambling, ecstatic. “I mean, I definitely want to have a baby  _ someday _ , but I just don’t think I could handle it now. So much better to wait until Cory and I are living in the same state and actually ready.”

“Well, congratulations on not being pregnant,” Shawn says, amused. He opens Cory’s jar of honey roasted peanuts and munches on a few. “See? I told you there was nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah,” Topanga says. “I never knew I could feel so much relief from two little lines.”

Shawn stops chewing, cocking his head to the side. “Two little lines?”

“Yeah, the test results,” she says matter-of-factly. “Two lines for negative, one line for positive.”

Shawn’s not certain… he’s just basing his knowledge of pregnancy tests off what he’s seen on TV. But he’s pretty sure… “Read the box, babe.” 

“What?” She sounds puzzled. The next thing he hears is Topanga’s shriek and the box clattering to the floor. “It’s positive!”

“Yep,” Shawn says, nudging Cory with his foot. “Wake up, Cor, you’re gonna be a dad.” Cory mumbles something sleepily and rolls back over. 

“How could this happen?” Topanga says, sounding shocked— but not quite dismayed.

“Well you see, Topanga, when two people love each other very much—”

“Okay, okay, no snarky remarks from you Mister for… for the next nine months!” He can hear her moving stuff around in her dorm, like she’s already trying to find space for a crib. “Oh my God, this is happening. Oh my God, I’m gonna have a baby.”

“Sure are,” Shawn says, nudging Cory more insistently. “Cory, here. It’s your wife.” He hands him the phone.

“‘Panga?” Cory mumbles, his eyes still drooping shut. At least he’s sitting up, mostly. “Wha’s going on?”

“Everything,” Topanga says. “Are you sitting down?”

“Not sure.” Cory glances down at himself. “Yeah. Think so.” 

“Okay.” Topanga takes a shaky breath, tries to settle her nerves. “I’m pregnant.”

Cory pulls the phone away from his ear and stairs at it, like the phone is responsible for what Topanga said. Then he brings the mouthpiece back toward his mouth. “Like… with a baby?”

“No, with a ferret. Yes a baby!”

“Oh!” Cory’s starting to wake up more, starting to let it sink in. “That’s great!”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Terrified!” Cory admits. “I’m also not totally awake yet. You’re really pregnant?”

“Really really,” Topanga says solemnly. Then, “You in?” They both hear how ridiculous she sounds, like she’s asking if Cory wants to go for frozen yogurt. 

Cory snorts. “Of course I’m in.”

* * *

 

Early graduation is a small, stunted affair, but at least Shawn and Cory get to toss their graduation caps up in the air together while Topanga watches proudly. Cory missed that part of his high school graduation— he was a little concerned with something else at the time. 

Damn. Proposed to at high school graduation, pregnant by college graduation. Life’s funny. Cory and Shawn don’t waste any time packing up their dorm and heading for New York City. The three of them take the train back, tired but happy, feeling not like they’re going back to some big strange city, but that they’re going home. 

Topanga, Shawn swears, is glowing. Just like all the clichés. Shawn sits beside his two favorite people in the world and thinks about what kind of baby they’ll have. 

“Hey,” he says quietly about halfway through the train ride. “I thought of another name that works for a boy or a girl.” Cory and Topanga look at him expectantly. “What about Riley?”    
  



End file.
